Tag Archives: children

When I was a kid we had a children’s cookbook filled with recipes designed for grade schoolers. I can picture the book exactly: yellow cover, line drawings and a red plastic spiral binding. As vivid as that image is, I can remember only one recipe we made from that book. I can’t actually be certain that it wasn’t the only one we tried, but I recall the taste perfectly. Essentially they were no-bake peanut butter balls, in which peanut butter and honey held O-shaped oat cereal together (okay, fine, I’ll say it: Cheerios). We used a health food brand called Oatios (which I just confirmed still exists and is sold through Amazon, what a trip!), so my sister and I dubbed these Oatio balls. The recipe also called for powdered milk, which I assume was mainly for the nutritional boost.

I’ll confess. My favorite thing about cloth diapering our son is not the cost savings or even the moral superiority I feel from taking the (harder) more eco-friendly route. (I’m kidding about the moral superiority, but only a little. I was raised a Yankee. If it’s more work, it must be better.)

My favorite thing about cloth diapering is cloth wipes. These things are genius. Soft, absorbent, and really effective at cleaning up a big mess without getting it on your hands. (TMI? You’re reading about cloth diapering. If that offends you, you better just stick with Huggies and save the planet some other way.)

Rant aside, with cloth wipes you control exactly what goes on your baby’s sensitive skin twelve times a day (or twenty, in the case of my son as an infant). Many commercial wipes are made with harsh chemical including parabens, a class of substances that Walmart is moving to ban from personal care products in its stores over the next few years (so you know it’s gotta be toxic!). Would you want that stuff on your intimate areas? If not, you shouldn’t put it on your baby’s. Continue reading Beyond babies and bums: Cloth wipes for all ages and stages→